"It is none of those. It is because she has given her word, the word of a Princess. What would you do in her place?" suddenly.
"I?" Phyllis leaned back among the cushions her eyes half-closed and a smile on her lips. "I am afraid that if I loved you I should follow you to the end of the world. Honor is a fine thing, but in her case it is an empty word. If she broke this word for you, who would be wronged? No one, since the Prince covets only her dowry and the King desires only his will obeyed. Perhaps I do not understand what social obligation means to these people who are born in purple."
"Perhaps that is it. Phyllis, listen, and I will tell you a romance which has not yet been drawn to its end. Once upon a time—let me call it a fairy story," said I, drawing down a palm leaf as if to read the tale from its blades. "Once upon a time, in a country far from ours, there lived a Prince and a Princess. The Prince was rather a bad fellow. His faith in his wife was not the best. And he made a vow that if ever children came he would make them as evil as himself. Not long after the good fairy brought two children to her godchild, the Princess. Remembering the vow made by the Prince, the good fairy carried away one of the children, and no one knew anything about it save the Princess and the fairy. When the remaining child was two years old the Princess died. The child from then on grew like a wild flower. The Prince did his best to spoil her, but the good fairy watched over her, just as carefully as she watched over the child she had hidden away. By and by the wicked Prince died. The child reached womanhood. The good fairy went away and left her; perhaps she now gave her whole attention to the other." I let the palm leaf slip back, and drew down a fresh one, Phyllis watching me with interest. "The child the fairy left was still a child, for all her womanhood. She was willful and capricious; she rode, she fenced, she hunted; she was as unlike other women as could be. At last the King, who was her guardian, grew weary of her caprices. So he commanded that she marry. But what had the fairy done with the other child, the twin sister of this wild Princess? Perhaps in this instance the good fairy died and left her work unfinished, to be taken up and pursued by a conventional newspaper reporter. Now this pro tem fairy, who was anything but good, as the word goes, made some curious discoveries. It seems that the good fairy had left the lost Princess in the care of one of a foreign race. Having a wife and daughter of his own, he brought the Princess up as his niece, not knowing himself who she really was. She became wise, respected, and beautiful in mind and form. Fate, who governs all fairy stories, first brought the newspaper reporter into the presence of the lost Princess. She was a mere girl then, and was selling lemonade at—at twenty-five cents a glass. She—"
"Jack," came in wondering tones, "for mercy's sake, what are you telling me?"
"Phyllis, can you not look back, perhaps as in a dream, to an old inn,
where soldiers and ministers in a hurry and confusion moved to and fro?
No; I dare say you were too young. The Princess Hildegarde of
Hohenphalia is your sister." I rose and bowed to her respectfully.
"My sister?—the Princess?—I, a Princess? Jack," indignantly, "you are mocking me! It is not fair!"
"Phyllis, as sure as I stand before you, all I have said is true. And now let me be the first to do homage to Your Serene Highness," taking her hand despite her efforts to withdraw it, and kissing it.
"It is unreal! Impossible! Absurd!" she cried.
"Let me repeat the words of the French philosopher, who said, 'As nothing is impossible, let us believe in the absurd,'" said I.
"But why has Uncle Bob kept me in ignorance all these years?" unconvinced.